Your organization uses an editorial calendar to plan out content for different channels, but there is still need the need to optimize it for different channels and do that efficiently. Optimizing your content for social channels does not have to be labor intensive. Many organizations create great content for their web sites or blogs and slightly tweak it for Facebook or Twitter – with a focus on making it visual. And, of course, there are benefits to visual content like increased engagement.

Take the example from National Wildlife Federation to engage its audiences around the 2013 Green Inaugural Ball event on Facebook and Twitter. First, the publish a blog post that includes text and a simple visual that incorporates the hashtag. That visual is used as their Facebook post and they also tweet using the hashtag #greenwish with a call to action to share a #greenwich with the president, our country and their community The want their stakeholders to rally around what they want to see in the future to protect public lands, wildlife and great waters, and also what kind of clean, sustainable solutions they want from the president.

The NWF is using a technique called “Text Overlay” — taking a photo and adding a few words. One of the more common ways that nonprofits are using text overlays for their Facebook content is for adding testimonial snippets to photos, like this series “Faces of Fellowship”

Using text overlays is one feature that an image editing tool offers. As John Haydon points out, you want a tool that can edit your visual content as follows:

visual storytelling also means that you need the ability to quickly edit the photos you are sharing. You need the ability to do several things with an image:

– Cropping–There are various different optimum dimensions for photos on each social media site, requiring the ability to crop images on the fly.

– Adjusting Contract and Tone–Many times the photos you take at event will need a little touching up.

– Resizing Images–Hi-res images taken with a Cannon Powershot might be way too big for a Facebook Page update.

– Creating Various File Types–Depending on the situation, you may need GIFs, JPGs or PNGs.

You might be wondering if it is difficult or expensive to create images with a text overlay, but it is very easy to do and there are many easy to use and free applications. In a recent discussion on Facebook, nonprofit social media managers shared some of their favorite apps for doing this:

PicMonkey on PC, it is web-based and super simple and you don’t even have to create an account.”

Social Media it seems to me opens up wonderful avenues for sharing details of activities and mission for non-profits but also absorbs scare resources in seemingly obligitary activity with questionable payback. A 2012 report suggested 98% of non profits are no wusing mainstream social media but the vast majority are disatisfied with the results. Perhaps there is a solution possible, better suited to supporting non-profits than a facebook page….

[…] you have an editorial calendar? That’s a good start, but you also need to know how to repurpose your content for different channels. Beth Kanter shares an example from the National Wildlife Federation along with types on using […]

I really appreciate the example, here, of how organizations are doing this, along with the tools to do it ourselves. That’s something that you do so well–bringing hands-on, immediately useful (often free!) tools together with the inspiration and the sort of theoretical basis for why that approach works. I’m grateful for you.

[…] great way to get them engaged. For more great tips, check out Beth Kanter’s great post on how to repurpose your content for social-media channels as well as her infographics about infographics (very […]